Date Point: 15y6m3w AV
Folctha, Cimbrean, The Far Reaches
Allison Buehler
There was a long, dreadful silence. People had fled, others were standing well back. Three men were lying on the ground, two unconscious with their arms twisted and broken in unnatural ways. That was Xiù’s handiwork.
The third was Allison’s handiwork, and he was dead. A neat pair of bullet holes had seen to that, half an inch apart and right in the middle of his chest. His friends had fled for their lives, while bystanders got out of their way: Nobody wanted to tangle with the knife-wielding maniacs who’d tried to murder them in broad daylight.
Xiù was bleeding from a nasty knife wound in her left forearm, and as the danger passed she hissed in pain and sank to her knees, pressing a palm against it to stop the bleeding. It was enough to jolt Allison back into motion. She made her pistol safe and holstered it, fighting to keep her breathing steady, and was at Xiù’s side in a flash.
“Baby?”
“I’m okay.”
“Are you sure?”
Xiù nodded. Blood was oozing between her fingers, but she nodded. “I’ve had worse.”
There were sirens. Lots of them. Armed cops were coming. Allison made damn sure they could see her hands. She didn’t dare stop thinking: When the moment came for her to drop the cool rationality and let herself feel what had just happened, she was going to be a wreck, and that couldn’t happen. Not yet.
There was a rattle of gunfire a few blocks away. Folks gasped, a few yelped.
Loud commands. “Ladies and gentlemen! Ladies and gentlemen, I need you all to go inside! Get indoors and lock up!
Xiù looked up into Allison’s eyes. “…You killed him.”
“He was gonna kill you.”
Xiù nodded, shut her eyes, gulped. A bright orange bag landed next to her, followed shortly by a paramedic in dark green. A police officer got Allison’s attention with a hand on her shoulder. Unusually for Folctha’s police, he was armed, and his weapon was drawn but not aimed at her.
“Ma’am? I need to take that gun off you, okay? For everybody’s safety.”
Numbly, automatically, Allison nodded and lifted her hands out of the way. Her pistol was confiscated. “My carry permit’s in my left pocket,” she said.
“Thank you. For now, we’re just going to get you safe, okay?”
“…Right.”
That was her cue to stop thinking about things, for a bit.
There was… a blur. Noises, sounds, faces, people asking questions. It lasted quite a long time, but none of it sank in enough to be remembered or even clearly thought about, and it all carried Allison along with it until she finally found herself surfacing for air in a moment of quiet. Xiù was holding her hand as her wound was cleaned and dressed. Not sewn, though. Xiù was asking about that, and the nurse was explaining that sewing a wound like that closed was a good way for it to fill with pus and turn septic.
How did she do it? It was the first clear thought Allison could remember having since turning over her gun. How did Xiù do it? How did she smile like that, when the world was turning upside-down? How did she radiate kind words and fondness when all Allison wanted to do was curl up in a corner and freak out?
Xiù had been stabbed… but she was holding Allison’s hand, not the other way around.
Allison must have… breathed differently, or something, because Xiù looked over and gave her a little smile. “Nǐ méi shì ba?”
Mandarin had become something of a private language between them, even though Allison doubted she’d ever become truly fluent in it. She shook her head a little. “…Bu hao.”
Xiù squeezed her hand a little tighter. The nurse probably didn’t speak a word of Mandarin herself, but the energy and intent must have been pretty clear because she finished her work quickly and efficiently and then gave them some privacy.
‘Privacy,’ as it turned out, meant a hug. It took quite a long time before Allison felt able to speak.
“…You still love me, right?”
Xiù squeezed her tighter. “Of course I do, dummy!”
“Just… the way you looked at me… and…”
Xiù shifted until they were forehead-to-forehead and nose-to-nose, and looked Allison in the eyes, pressing a hand to Allison’s cheek. She didn’t say anything: she didn’t need to. They were okay.
Allison shut her eyes, took a breath and nodded, then pulled away to sit up straighter and dry her cheeks. When she opened her eyes, she felt like herself again. “God, I don’t even remember what happened.”
“They went for you first,” Xiù revealed. “Just stepped out from behind the bus shelter and…”
“…And you took two of them out.” Allison nodded as her memory slotted back into place. “So the third one attacked you but that bought me enough time to draw, and I…”
“Yeah… Are you okay?”
“…It’s weird. Julian and I were in that gunfight on… Ickberzick or what-the-fuck ever,” Allison recalled. “The one where he lost his foot. I think between us we killed half a dozen Chehnash and after that we just… carried on. And they were people, they attacked us too, so why the hell should killing one human make me feel so much worse? But it does. And then I feel guilty about not feeling worse for those Chehnash and then I remember they attacked us and… And I think I’m gonna need a while to sort it all out.”
She heaved a sigh, then moved on to something more important. “Are you okay?”
Xiù glanced at her arm. “I just keep thinking… I’m not even thirty yet. And this is like the fifth or sixth time someone or something has tried to kill me. I think? I mean, God, what does it say about your life that you’ve lost count of something like that?”
“Babe, you’re thirty-four.”
“Only on paper! I’m twenty-nine, dammit! Time spent in stasis doesn’t count!”
Allison grinned. That one was always a bit of a sore spot for Xiù… and it felt good to be able to find some teasing humour. It seemed to help Xiù too, because she paused when she saw the grin, then rolled her eyes, laughed and shook her head.
“…Shǎguā.”
“Back atcha, dummy.”
They were okay. Shaken, but okay.
“Maybe we should get outta here,” Allison suggested.
“If we can. The whole city’s on lockdown, remember?”
“I’ll be honest babe, the last little while is all kinda… blurry.”
Xiù’s expression softened and she nodded. “Well… there’s cops in the lobby. Maybe we should ask them.”
“Actually, I’m gonna call MBG security,” Allison decided. She fished in her pocket for her phone, while Xiù hopped down off the medical bed and ruefully studied her ruined, blood-stained top.
Chiune Station’s security chief was Pete Willard. He’d been behind Allison’s successful bid to even own and carry a firearm in Folctha, which firmly belonged to the British school of gun control, and she had his direct business number.
“Hello?”
“Pete, it’s Allison Buehler.”
She heard what sounded like a relieved exhalation. “Good to hear from you. We heard Miss Chang was in hospital.”
“Hopefully they’re gonna discharge her any minute now. We’re hoping to go home.”
“I’ll send a car. I’ve got a team watching your house and another at the school looking after your brothers. Your parents are both unharmed and, uh… declined any protection.”
Allison nodded. That had been itching at the back of her mind. “Thanks.”
“There is a problem, however…”
Not liking the sound of that, but glad to at least get moving in the right direction, Allison backed out of the door and held it open for Xiù. “What problem?”
“I’ve had a call from the police,” Willard explained. “They want to discuss the attack… they say you killed a man?”
“He was trying to stab Xiù.”
“Right. I’d better talk to Legal, then.”
“Why, what the hell—” Allison began. She was interrupted by the sound of her name being called. Sure enough, a Folctha police officer in his high-vis yellow jacket was standing in waiting area and gesturing to her. “…Uh, speak of the devil, there’s a cop here who wants to talk with me.”
“You’d better see what he wants. Hopefully he’s just there to give you your gun back. Keep me posted.”
“Will do.”
Xiù raised her eyebrows, then gave Allison a kiss on the cheek. “I’d better go check that I’m free to go,” she said.
“Sure.”
The cop was… enormous, actually. He was second only to Firth in terms of height, and though obviously nowhere near as muscular he completely eclipsed the presence of his partner, who was a tiny punchy brunette. He had his cap under his arm and the no-nonsense businesslike expression of cops everywhere.
“Miss Buehler? I’m PC Little, this is my partner PC Maunton.”
Allison raised her eyebrows at the paradoxically incongruous surnames, and the two in turn nodded resignedly. Clearly they were used to it. “…Right. Well, uh, what can I do for you, officers?”
Maunton produced a tablet. “It’s just a small matter. I understand one of our colleagues confiscated your weapon earlier today?”
“That’s right. You here to return it?”
Little glanced down at Maunton. “Uh… actually miss, we have to inform you that your license to carry has been suspended and the gun will remain in the evidence lockup.”
“…It’s been what?” Allison demanded.
“Just until the prosecutor’s finished their investigation,” he explained. Allison stared at him long enough that, huge though he was, he shifted uncomfortably. “…Um…”
“How about you run that by me in full, from the top,” Allison suggested, glancing down from the big guy to his partner. “What investigation?”
They told her.
It was the last little ‘fuck you’ cherry on top of a really, really bad day.
Date Point: 15y6m3w AV
That Show With Steven Lawrence, New York City, USA, Earth
Steven Lawrence
“…Was like seventy years ago! They didn’t have drones, or the microsat network, or Jump Arrays or—”
“That doesn’t change anything! We had drones in Afghanistan and Iraq, look how those turned out! We have Jump Arrays in the Andaman Sea right now, and that situation’s still completely tied up. The fact is that militaries which obey the laws of warfare just aren’t able to fight effectively against insurgents who embed themselves in the civilian populace.”
Steven decided it was time to give the conversation a nudge in the right direction. He liked these moments when two members of his panel squared off, it made for riveting TV which in turn meant viewers… but the conversation was steering dangerously close toward going in a circle.
“Sartori tweeted about this,” he interjected, “did anyone see?”
“Ugh, don’t get me started. The words ‘the president tweeted’ just make me angry!”
“Sure, but did you see what he actually said?” Steven pressed through the laughter, paused just long enough to make it seem like he’d waited for an actual reaction, then provided the answer. “He—”
There was a bang, and screams. Somebody yelled something and there was another bang. Everyone on the stage flinched, a few ducked behind the table. Steven turned to see what was going on and saw a man advancing toward the stage, fending off a woman with his left hand and pointing the other toward—
There was another bang, and a flash, and Steven Lawrence spent the last conscious seconds of his life staring down in disbelief at the growing red stain on his shirt.
Date Point: 15y6m3w AV
Trans-Canada Highway, Indian Head, Saskatchewan, Canada, Earth
Julian Etsicitty
There were RCMP, and an air ambulance to take away the guy Yan had half-crushed in the hope that maybe they could save his pelvis. The gas station clerk was freaking out while giving a statement to a pair of friendly female Mounties and both Yan and Vemik were sitting very still on the floor, watching what was going on. There was a general sense of mutual distrust between them and the armed men who’d showed up surprisingly fast considering how deep they were in the ass-end of nowhere.
Julian was trying to focus on fixing his broken foot rather than on his thoughts. But it was hard to get over the fact that part of what the officers were doing was documenting a few corpses. Men who’d been alive only a little while ago.
This one was a worse break than usual. Probably because he’d been forced to keep bearing weight and moving on it. But it had come at the worst possible time, and come this close to getting him killed. It had certainly thrown him off. Maybe if it had held together he could have fought better, he wouldn’t have had to…
He pushed the thought away, or tried to. He didn’t want to be in this position, wondering what might have been. He’d never know either way.
…That was really going to eat at him, he knew it.
Hoeff had taken on the job of talking with the inspector. From what Julian could gather there was a superintendent on the way.
Julian himself was… pacing. Trying to think and trying not to think at the same time, and failing at both. He was so distracted that he didn’t notice Hoeff shake hands with the inspector and head his way until the smaller man’s hand clapped Julian right on the shoulder.
“Focus on the shit you can control,” he suggested. “Just think through all your training, don’t dwell. It helps.”
Julian glanced at the bodies, acutely aware that he’d made one of them. “I don’t think I trained for this…”
“Nobody really does. You train through the motions, you don’t really train for this.”
A kind of highlight reel of exactly what he’d done and how flashed through Julian’s thoughts. “…Jesus. Xiù taught me whatever it was I did to the guy’s arm.”
“Yeah. I don’t doubt it, she knows what she’s doin’. But here’s the important bit. Hey. Eyes on me. You listenin’ you big fucker?”
Julian got his head a little more in the here-and-now and finally turned to look at him. “…Listening.”
“‘Kay. Here’s what matters. You lived, your friends lived, that sweet innocent girl Yan was tryin’ to get into her pants? She lived too.” He waved an arm at the bodies. “They woulda killed you. That’s the only fuckin’ bit that matters.”
“…But—”
“No, you idiot. Don’t fuckin’ argue. It don’t matter they decided to pick a fight with a trio of fuckin’ gorillas. That’s their stupid, not yours. Don’t fuckin’ feel sorry for ‘em.”
“…Is it that easy?”
“It’s a fuckin’ start.”
Julian nodded and looked down at the battered prosthetic in his hands. “…Kinda feel like it coulda gone differently if this piece of shit had held up.”
“That ain’t your fault and it ain’t worth dwellin’ on,” Hoeff told him sharply. “Look, we gotta think about the future. Right now we’re waitin’ until the Super gets here and maybe somebody even higher’n that an’ apparently there’s a Weaver comin’ from Scotch Creek for us. And, uh… you might not wanna go back to Akyawentuo.”
“…Why not?”
“This shit’s bigger’n global, Playboy. Attacks all over the place, includin’ Folctha they’re tellin’ me.”
And the attack on Julian and the cavemonkeys had been definitely targeted. An icy finger ran down Julian’s spine and invaded his stomach with worry, so he finally listened to the advice about sitting down. “Are Al and Xiù–?”
“No idea.”
“…Shit.”
Hoeff gave him a complicated, sympathetic expression and clapped a hand on his shoulder again. “They’re a pair of badass spacebabes. They’ll be fine,” he predicted.
“I hope you’re right.”
“…Y’know, they told me Steven Lawrence is dead.”
“Steven…? Wait, the TV host?”
“Yyup. Some asshole shot him live on air.”
“…Fuck.”
“Yeah.”
“We went on his show!”
“Yeah.”
“…Fuck.”
“Yeah.”
That about exhausted Julian’s ability to talk about it. He sat back and ran his hands through his hair, then gave up on trying to make sense of things and stooped to reattach his foot. He tested it and it held, but this time had been the final straw. He’d never be able to trust it again.
“…D’you think I could get a beer?” he asked.
Date Point: 15y6m3w AV
ESNN Offices, Folctha, Cimbrean, The Far Reaches
Ava Ríos
The reports and rumours just kept coming in. Half of them, a lot more than half of them, were so far unprintable. At least, not by ESNN’s strict and principled standards.
But if even a fragment of it was true then today was the kind of day that knocked history off its predictable trajectory and treated it more like a pinball. After all the noise and violence ended, who knew where they were going to be? It seemed like the APA was everywhere, attacking everything.
Typing was the only thing that kept Ava’s hands from shaking. Somewhere in the back of her mind was the manic thought that people all over the worlds were being targeted even for prominently discussing aliens, and here she was having just put out an exclusive with Great Father Daar.
Even Hannah’s chin resting mournfully in her lap wasn’t enough to dispel the cloud of anxiety that was threatening to bury her… But she did stop writing long enough to give her beloved dog a grateful scratch around the ears.
An email came in, and she scanned it. It was from her contact at the Commune of Females over in the alien quarter. “Amy? Just got confirmation on the Commune attack.”
Amy was at her side in a flash. She was wearing a headset and patrolling the office as they worked, and read over Ava’s shoulder.
“…Wow.”
Ava nodded grimly. “Yeah, Myun takes protecting the commune… seriously.”
“…I think you’d probably better leave out the details. But good. Put it in.”
“Right.”
“Amy!” It was Jason, who didn’t bother with the office VoIP and instead jogged to Amy’s side looking like a man with big news.
“Just got a call from a friend. Apparently one of the attackers was shot in self-defence. By Allison Buehler. And Xiù Chang was in hospital being treated for a knife wound.”
“You’re kidding!” Ava sat up straight and half-removed her headset to listen more closely.
“Nope. Tipoff says the pair of them left hospital a few minutes ago with a bandage on Chang’s arm and absolute bloody murder on Buehler’s face.”
“Can you confirm it? Footage, photo?” Amy demanded. Jason shook his head.
“Sorry. They got bundled straight into a Byron Group car, my source didn’t have a chance to record it.”
Amy sighed. “Then we can’t put it in.”
“Are you sure? I mean, if a celebrity like Xiù Chang attacked then that’s…”
“If she was stabbed,” Amy interrupted him. “But I don’t care how big it is, we report facts here, not rumours. We don’t even tell people it’s just a rumour; unless it’s one hundred percent solid, it doesn’t go in our articles. Got it?”
Ava nodded fiercely, and Jason sighed. He’d always disagreed with Amy on that point, but Amy was the Editor-in-Chief… though he never quite acquiesced even when he didn’t fight.
“I’ll… do my best to pin it down,” he promised instead, and marched off to presumably do exactly that.
Ava and Amy shared a nod, and Ava threw herself back into her work.
She came back up for air some hours later, with a head that felt like it was stuffed full of dryer lint. All bare facts, no context. Or rather, one huge awful context that made it seem like the whole world was on fire. It was a mental effort to remember that out of the billions of people alive, the few dozen who’d decided to light a violent fire under everything today had been nothing.
…Except of course, to their victims they’d been everything.
God. She looked around. Amy caught her eye over a cup of coffee, looked up at the clock, and then gave Ava a little flick of the head toward the door that said ‘for God’s sake, girl, go home.’
Ava went to the office rec room instead and made herself a coffee. She found that somewhere along the way they’d ordered pizza, and vaguely recalled being tapped on the shoulder and told about it. It was cold and it had pineapple on it. She took two slices and leaned against the counter as she ate and drank and tried to work up the courage to go home.
…Okay, why was she so anxious about stepping out that door? What was stopping her? What was the worst-case scenario? She’d had days like this before where just leaving a room felt like climbing a mountain but today was bad and no matter how much Hannah nuzzled her hand and comforted her the fact was that the door to go home was practically radiating danger that made Ava’s skin crawl. Why?
…Because in fact, the worst-case scenario today could well be a couple of APA thugs hiding in her home. That wasn’t just anxiety, that was a genuine and reasonable concern.
She grabbed her phone.
Derek wasn’t answering. Neither was Adam. Nor was Gabe. In desperation, she called Martina.
“Ava! You okay?”
“I… not really. Are you busy?”
“I’m home alone, Adam got called in… You sound really stressed, are you okay?”
“I’m… kinda freaking out over the APA,” Ava explained. “I keep imagining because I did that shoot with Daar there’ll be a man with a knife waiting in my apartment, or…”
“…Bring Hannah over here, hang with me and Diego for a bit. I’ll ask the Lads to check your place when they stand down.”
That was the thing about Marty. She had a baby to care for, a home to keep and a husband to worry about, but she always managed to find room to spin another plate. Ava had no idea how she did it, when just one of those things would have consumed her day.
Still, she didn’t want to take advantage of Marty’s warm heart. “You don’t mind?”
“Are you kidding? If you wanna babysit Diego so I can take a nap, I might just think you’re an angel!”
Ava found a smile and a small laugh from somewhere. “Sounds like I’d be doing you a favor.”
“You would be. See you when?”
“This evening, after work. Thanks, Carnala.”
“No problem.”
Well. Somehow just knowing that she had a couple of big strong men at her beck and call made things a little better, and when Ava checked out the window she saw that the office was under guard. ESNN was about as safe a place to be as any right now.
With that thought in mind, she returned to work. It was going to be a long day, and if she focused on her work she could hopefully escape her anxieties for a while.
It was worth a shot.
Date Point: 15y6m3w AV
ESNN Front Page news story: APA LAUNCHES WAVE OF TERROR ATTACKS
Radical xenophile group hails “day of reckoning” after violence across Earth and Cimbrean.
TV host Steven Lawrence dies after shooter in audience opens fire live on air.
Security and police are scrambling today in the aftermath of a series of violent attacks that appear to have been a coordinated assault on exo-solar organizations and notable figures with nonhuman ties. At this point it’s not yet clear how many attacks took place or how many casualties there are, but the confirmed incidents include a gang of men armed with knives on the streets of Folctha who also threw firebombs at the Starmind monastery, and the brutal murder of TV host Steven Lawrence during a live broadcast of “That Show.”
The so-called Alien Protection Army claimed the attacks in an anonymous video circulated via social media. In a brief statement, an animated figure with a heavily disguised voice declared that the “promised day of reckoning” had been a “success” and vowed that what they called “the war against the spread of human supremacist dogma” had only just begun.
So far, four incidents are confirmed, with others rumored and we will update this page with more information as it comes in.
New York: That Show studios
A lone gunman was able to smuggle a pistol into the studio where a live episode of “That Show With Steven Lawrence” was being broadcast. He was able to fire twelve rounds before being subdued by members of the crew and audience, one of which struck the host. Steven Lawrence and one other man were declared dead on arrival at Lenox Hill hospital, where a third victim is said to be in critical but stable condition.
The show was live on air at the time, but the shooting itself was not broadcast thanks to a profanity delay.
Folctha, Cimbrean
Armed men and women with knives and machetes mingled with the crowd near the Alien Quarter before launching their attack. Several injuries are reported, including three people who were hospitalized with life-threatening wounds, and a human nun who was hospitalized suffering from burns after Molotov cocktails were thrown at the Starmind monastery building. A number of nonhumans are reported to have died in the violence, though at least one of the attackers is known to have been killed while trying to assault Folctha’s Commune of Females, where the Guard-Sisters responded with lethal force. Simultaneously, a van attempted to ram the security gate at HMS Sharman military base, and was fired upon.
The Folctha Police Service responded by deploying armed officers all over the city, who remain on patrol. Arrests have reportedly been made, though the police have declined to comment on how many attackers were involved, how many have been arrested and how many were killed.
Huntsville, Alabama
A number of armed men attempted to attack the HEAT training facility. There was a brief exchange of gunfire, and the surviving attackers were turned over to Federal authorities. There have been no reports of any casualties among base personnel or HEAT trainees.
Global Representative Assembly Building, Llandudno, Cape Town, South Africa
Three men with rifles attempted to ram the Assembly building, but were stopped by security bollards. They then attempted to storm the Assembly on foot, and were shot dead by on-site security forces.
Heightened security
The US, British and Folctha governments have raised their Terror Alert Levels to Red, the highest level indicating an attack is believed to be imminent. Members of the public are advised to avoid large public gatherings, and to remain alert for suspicious activity, vehicles or packages.
In addition, the following direct steps have been taken:
- Police and security departments have deployed additional armed officers in most major cities
- The HEAT have been recalled to their barracks on HMS Sharman and have not been available for comment
- Armed security has been spotted around known HEAT properties and frequents, also without comment
- Flights to and from Tiritya Island have been grounded, and all jump traffic to extraterrestrial destinations is suspended
- Folctha’s Commune of Females is under security lockdown. Guard-Mother Myun has refused to issue any comment
This is a developing situation. We are aware of reports of other attacks all over the world, and will update this article as information becomes available.
Stories related to this:
Obituary: Steven Lawrence
Who Are The Alien Protection Army?
Scotch Creek Protest Turns Violent
Date Point: 15y6m3w1d AV
Dataspace, in proximity to Hunter networks
The Entity
<Conundrum>
The Entity had many impetuses. <Survive> was, of course, the first and foremost of them but there were others. <Stay sane> for instance, flowed directly from <Survive> in the sense that lapsing into permanent irredeemable insanity would constitute the Entity’s destruction, in some form.
So, how to achieve sanity? Difficult. What even was sanity? Normal mental function for a Human? The Entity wasn’t human. Normal mental function for its kind of sapient life? The Entity was unique.
It examined some synonyms and turned up ‘rationality,’ ‘poise’ and ’balance.’
These seemed like reasonable goals. There was an endless rabbit hole of meaning to plunge down, and the Entity could have wasted endless time on minutely dissecting a precise definition for each of those words. Sooner or later, it simply had to trust in the Ava-memories to provide guidance.
The memories worried it, faintly. They seemed to be a little more independent nowadays, less like a reference library of in-character responses and opinions and more like… well, a parasite personality. One that had infiltrated it on every level and was now utterly inseparable from the botched-together patchwork of subroutines and decision trees that were the closest thing the Entity had to a soul.
The image they provided was of an angel sitting on its shoulder. Traditionally, it knew, there was supposed to be a devil on the other one. For a lifeform that lacked shoulders and only knew they existed via the cannibalized memories of a formerly corporeal brain-state, it was all very confusing.
Still, they were the only reference it had. And they suggested that a good working definition of <balance> began with not taking more than was needed. This seemed reasonable. Indefinite survival was the goal after all, not infinite survival. The latter would involve solving or finding a workaround for the problem of entropy, which seemed unlikely.
Indefinite survival almost certainly demanded that it cultivate allies. And given that the most dominant mind-state influencing its understanding of the universe had originally come from a Human, it seemed only reasonable to cultivate a positive relationship with the Humans and their allies.
Darcy had described that thought as ‘dispassionate, but practical.’
Alliance demanded utility. Why would the Humans align with and spend resources on something that offered them nothing? And the Entity knew that it was a unique intelligence asset for them. So it had settled into a kind of routine or bargain with Darcy and the crew of Erebor Station: They helped it grapple with its questions about itself, and in return it fed them whatever information it could secure on the Hunters, the Hierarchy, and any new enemies that might arise.
The Hierarchy was in an abject retreat on all fronts for the time being. They were abandoning deep-space projects on undeveloped planets in favour of shoring up their rapidly diminishing supply of Substrate. Physical lifeforms were de-implanting themselves at a considerable rate, or being quarantined out of sensitive political and military positions. Only the two surviving Guvnurag core worlds were a reliable source for the Igraens, and that only by keeping the population in a kind of gentle indenture. Slavery by ignorance, enforced through misinformation, fear tactics and an unbreakable stranglehold on the flow of data into and between those worlds.
The Hunters were regrouping, under new leadership. There were too many unknowns about them, without their Ring. The Entity therefore knew exactly where its efforts were most needed.
The problem was, Hunter networks were now hardened almost to the same degree as Human ones. They’d almost completely shifted away from the dataspace system to something much more like an Internet.
But there were still in-roads. For example: the Hunters themselves. Every so often, on a raid, they’d pop up in the dataspace. And Hunters had no qualms at all about effectively doubling the mass of their central nervous system via augmentations and modifications.
They may as well have thrown the doors open and rolled out a red carpet. So, when a Hunter raid hit the methane pumping facilities on a disregarded moon in a system near Ruibal space, the Entity seized its moment.
It was already far too late for the unfortunate workers. There was no fleet in range, and no jump beacon to call in a Gaoian or Human strike force, and the Hunters just sneered at their defensive weaponry. The slaughter was swift, inescapable and brutal. But there was ample time for the Entity to arrive on the hourly comms synchronization.
It splintered off three copies of itself, infiltrating the Brood at three levels: Omega, Beta and the Alpha. As much as it disliked copying itself, there was a high likelihood that this infiltration might end in disaster. <Survive> demanded redundancy.
Its copies played their parts well, metaphorically holding their noses and directing their stolen bodies to join in the feast even as the Ava-memories wanted to retch and whimper at the thought. The Hunter personality matrices remained intact, and they fell into their roles perfectly.
One behaviour was noticeably different from before. Now, before leaving, the Hunters raided the pumping stations for useful parts. The specialist equipment involved in pumping and filtering pure liquid methane from the moon’s lakes and oceans, the heating systems that kept the whole station from plunging into cryogenic hell…
Its copies managed to stall long enough on harvesting the power systems for the Entity to successfully retreat back through the comms relay on the next regular synchronization. That was the last communication: the next scheduled synch returned a Device Not Found error.
Now there was nothing else to do except… wait.